What they chose: universal health care; economic recovery and job creation; building a green economy/stopping climate change; and end the war in Iraq.

More interesting is what they didn’t:

What they didn’t: holding the Bush administration accountable; fighting for gay rights and LGBT equality; and reforming campaigns and elections.

Note that while gay rights were mentioned, women’s were not even an option.

Also, was this a typo? Holding who accountable? Bush? You mean like W used to blame Clinton for everything that went wrong years into his administration? Did anyone even consider holding Obama accountable?

I also think Pariser is deluding himself when he thinks what they picked constitutes

wasn’t fully aware of Obama’s call for a residual force in Iraq and was trying to get a sense from MoveOn members on their views about Afghanistan .

You think he found out since?

And where are the members on Afghanistan? I didn’t see it on the list of issues to be voted on any more than women’s rights.

But their new mission

“make sure Congress is squeezed between a progressive president and a progressive constituency.”

Oh, and if this doesn’t sound delusional and cynical enough, wait till you hear from the blogo-propaganda:

In addition, argues Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the liberal blog Daily Kos, MoveOn can actually help the administration by remaining visible and vocal rather than pulling its punches. He notes that the right won’t stop agitating for its agenda, so the left must continue to make demands in order to keep the momentum. “I don’t think that it’s necessarily a bad thing for the administration,” he says. “A lot of times they can offer them political cover to do the right thing.”

Ummm – why is doing the right thing needs political cover anyway?

And how will they be different from the so called mainstream media?

And funny they remembered:

This kind of work won’t necessarily generate the kind of buzz – good or bad – that the group’s “General Betray Us” ad garnered.

Say Good Night Caroline: How JKF’s daughter Flubbed the Audition to become the next Senator Kennedy

And he’d be absolutely right had the part not be cast without an audition. On box office estimates alone (extremely appropriate metaphor, BTW)

But a strange thing is happening on the way to the coronation. The wheels of the bandwagon are coming off. Fantasy is giving way to inescapable truth.

Her quest is becoming a cringe-inducing experience, as painful to watch as it must be to endure.

Everyone sees it.

But the minute she faced the routine questions that help define a candidate for virtually any office, she had nothing to say. There was no “there” there.

Will Ted’s political machine face the obvious ? Apparently not.

Sensing she’s not ready for prime time, her handlers, most of whom have connections to Mayor Bloomberg, suddenly insisted media questions be submitted in writing. The answers they provided, under their names, were vapid. And she will not, as is the campaign custom, release financial documents that reveal her wealth and holdings. We’re expected to trust she has no conflicts of interest.

And another tidbit I have not considered:

The point is that this self-described advocate for the public schools did not send her children to them.

It’s true, W broke the competence & experience barrier. He made Barack I-run-this-campaign Obama possible. But Caroline will take the absurdity to new levels.

A year ago today, I was in New Hampshire volunteering for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. I was bundled up in my warmest parka, snow boots, gloves and hat. I was canvassing from door to door knocking and handing out brochures.

A year ago today, I was a lifelong Democrat. At every election – be it a national, state or local election – the Democratic Party could count on my vote. I would blindly pull down the lever for the candidate with the “D” next to his or her name: never taking notice that the candidate with the “R” or “I” or “G” might be a woman.

A year ago today, I was the lone person at work who would admit to voting Democrat. I was chided and teased. I was called a sucker that did not “get it.” I fought back with pride each time. I was proud to be a Democrat. The Democratic Party was the party for equality and helping those less fortunate. The Democratic Party was the party that stood up for women.

A year ago today, I believed that the women of this country were on an upward trajectory. That with each passing year we were making progress in politics, business, academia and sports. That any setbacks were but small speed bumps on the way forward.

A year ago today, I believed that by time my daughter or her daughter were grown-up, there would be equality of the sexes in this country. In fact, this was so self-evident, that I did not give it a second thought.

And then came the Democratic Primary. And then came the grave mistreatment of Hillary Clinton while the Democratic Party stood idly by, or cheered it on. And then I saw. What I saw was not anything new. What I saw had been there all along. But I just hadn’t seen it. Or maybe I hadn’t been willing to see it. And then I was awakened.

It’s when you are canvassing the projects in North Philly asking for a vote. And you happen upon a woman who lives in a tenement whose windows have been replaced by cardboard boxes. And when you knock to ask her for her vote, she cries instead about raising her child alone. And her son is in trouble at school. And no one will listen. And no one will help.

It’s when your 5th grade daughter’s friend gets into your car after school one day. And her friend is crying because a gang of boys had acted out on her. And the girl is told she is a “bitch” and a “whore” by a pack of circling boys for breaking up with their friend. And then you see that it starts very early. And then you notice the familiarity of those words as having heard them in prime time on the cable news. And then, with eyes now open, you realize that you can no longer sit at the sidelines and still live with yourself.

And so a journey starts. And so you choose to put everything else in your life aside. And so you choose to fight for the woman in North Philly and the 10 year-old girl. And so you do your best every day. And so you speak out and stand up when others will not. And so you endure criticism from the left, right and center. And so you close your eyes and sigh when the very women you vowed to fight for are your loudest and harshest critics.

But you know you cannot go back. That what has started must continue. That this has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with those without a voice. And so you battle on day after day. And so, in the quiet moments, you remember the tears of the woman in North Philly and the 10 year-old girl. And in your quiet moments, you are thankful for the awakening. And in your quiet moments, you vow to battle on and not stop.

As one who has not been laboring under Obama reveries and who began trying to figure out whether he reminded me more of Richard Nixon or George W. Bush as far back as the fall of 2007, this late faint awakening from a journalist of many years’ experience seems peculiar, to say the least

Because if racism is fear of those different than you, I do fear you, Barack Obama. I even have antipathy for you. You don’t look like me.

From where I sit you look very much like George Bush.

Too bad the media was asleep at the wheel – when they should have informed the electorate. or in truth, not asleep but doing PR for their dreamy candidate.

And it’s the reason I picked the NY Post Obama endorsement page as graphic – Bush apologists, funky context. In their print justification they also added that Hillary was “even more liberal than her husband, more liberal than Obama” From the mouth of Murdoch babes!